


The Disappearing Tower

by PotatoKing



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Original Work
Genre: Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, Gen, Original Campaign, Planar Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-09 22:05:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12897804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PotatoKing/pseuds/PotatoKing
Summary: Arturio, Isabella, and Flint are called in to help deal with a security breach at the Lunevare Mage College's Library Tower, which Isabella takes as an opportunity to resolve some unfinished business. Written as an entry for the 2017 Boroondara Literature Competition (Open Short Story Category).





	The Disappearing Tower

Arturio Goldwood laid out a builder’s schematic for a six-storey tower that took up the entirety of the table in the middle of the room.

“The Lunavare Mage Collective’s Library,” they started. “The disappearing tower. Every full moon, it disappears as a security measure. For the past three months, however, artefacts and texts have been coming back damaged or missing. Something on the other side’s been messing with ‘em. We’re getting paid to go in before it disappears in two days, figure out what’s been doing it, and neutralise it. Finding the missing texts is secondary, but will be rewarded handsomely. The mages know it’s some other plane of existence the tower goes to, but they don’t know which one. So, we’re kind of going in blind here. This means you should probably be paying attention to what little intel we have, _Isabella_.” They looked pointedly to the corner, where the party’s resident witch was busying herself pulling a thread from her suit sleeve. She looked up.

“Artie, Lunavare’s the only mage college on the continent. It’s my alma mater, so unless they’ve renovated a building that has its magic tied to the stones it’s built from and so is impossible to renovate, I know the place like the back of my hand,” she responded before pondering a second. “Well, except for the sixth floor. But that doesn’t count.”

“How does one sixth of the building not count?” Flint, the party’s dwarven fighter asked gruffly.

“The sixth floor keeps changing. Layout, contents, the whole thing. No-one knows why. Probably a side effect of the plane-shifting magic.”

Arturio gave her a look for a moment before throwing their hands up in the air in exasperation. “Fine. Isabella, you’re exempted from having to care until tomorrow, when we’re going on recon. Go do…whatever it is humans do at night. Stay safe, make good choices.”

“Thanks, dad,” Isabella quipped over her shoulder as she left the elf and dwarf to their devices and headed into her room. She closed the door before retrieving a well-worn and copy of ‘Mystra’s Guide to the Multiverse’, flipping through until reaching a faded passage;

“…While varying from plane to plane, most mages see seven as being the number around which most magic is based in much the same way that, for example, the human number system is based around ten. As such, they tend to work it into their architectural stylings wherever they can, favouring seven-storey buildings…”

The last line of that passage was underlined heavily, and in the margin, a doodle by a sixteen-year-old Isabella depicted the library tower with the floors labelled from one to six and a question mark scribbled above. She ran a finger over her old handwriting before making a silent vow to her younger self to finally solve the mystery she had devoted her formative years to if it killed her. She extinguished her lantern, and slipped into a dreamless sleep.

She was woken the next day by a sharp knocking. She groggily gave permission to enter, and Arturio opened the door before throwing her some form of pastry.

“Rise and shine, sleepy-head. Meet us downstairs in five,” they said, closing the door without waiting for a response.

Isabella joined Arturio and Flint in the pub downstairs, and they set off into the bright day. Lunavare was a small city approximately nine miles from the outer edge to the library tower in the middle. The streets were narrow, intended for brooms and pedestrians rather than the horse-drawn carts most cities built around. As they walked towards the tower, Isabella tapped Arturio’s shoulder.

“Hey, Artie, just double-checking something. We have any plans to stop by the botanic gardens during our supply run?” she asked.

“Not currently, but we can if you need. Why?”

“A hunch. It’s probably nothing, but there’s something there I’d like to get to be safe,” she answered. Arturio nodded, and they continued to the tower.

Once there, they were greeted by an elvish librarian in a cashmere robe who introduced herself as Fiona. Fiona raised an eyebrow at Isabella and Isabella gave her a stiff nod to confirm that she was in fact the person she recognised from her academy days, but neither said a word to each other. Fiona addressed the group.

“So, the tower has been here almost a century now. There are six floors, of which the first two are accessible to the public. The rest are restricted to students and faculty from the college, members of the Collective, and… _special exceptions_ such as yourselves. The first floor is the public library.” she gestured to their surroundings; several rows of bookcases came out from the walls, with about a metre between the ones on each side leaving a path down the middle. “If you’ll follow me upstairs?” she continued, heading towards the wrought-iron spiral staircase without waiting for a response.

The stairs led to a room full of metre-high podiums, each with a light pink orb floating above them containing some sort of artefact. One contained a worn spell-book that was chained shut and physically fighting its restraints, another contained a glass orb filled with water and a mechanical goldfish. At the far side of the room from the stairwell exit was a tree that seemed to have a large resting face carved into it. Isabella walked up to it nonchalantly, lightly fist-bumping one of the lower branches.

“Hey, Dee, how’s life?” She asked. Arturio gave her a questioning look from across the room before the tree opened its mouth and spoke in a deep voice that rumbled through the floor.

“All things considering, life is quite well, young Isabella. Much better for the pleasure of your company again after so many years,” Dee answered.

“You really are a gentleman Dee, has anyone told you that?”

“Yes. You, for a start; quite frequently, as I recall. If I may, what brings you back to Lunavare?”

“Business; but between you and me-” Isabella leaned in so that only Dee could hear her. “-I think I’ve got a lead on the seventh floor,” she whispered. Dee raised a bushy eyebrow.

“Isabella, you have been obsessed with this building since the day you first laid eyes on it, and while I can tell you that you aren’t wrong, you aren’t right either. Not in the way you think, and certainly not in the way you hope.” Isabella raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Thanks for the reassurance, Dee. Cryptic as always.”

“What can I say? If _you_ got hit with truth spells day in, day out, for the better part of a century by over-eager clerics in training, you too might learn to hold that sharp tongue of yours,” Dee quipped. Isabella pursed her lips and nodded.

“Fair point. Anyway, I should probably head off. Take care of yourself, Dee. I’ll see you around.”

“Take care, Isabella,” Dee replied as Isabella headed back towards Arturio and Flint.

 “Just catching up with an old friend,” she said, answering their unspoken question.

Fiona led them to the third floor, which looked startlingly out of place compared to the stone walls and order of the lower levels. Three small trees were in the middle of the room arranged in a triangle with leaves littering the floor underneath, floor-to-ceiling bookcases set into the rounded walls. As Isabella looked away from them, out of the corner of her eye she saw figures leaning against the trees.

“Many of the books in Lunavare were printed using trees from a forest about ten miles east of here. It transpired that it was a dryad forest and several of them wished to accompany the forest to its new home, so…this was the arrangement reached,” Fiona explained. One of the dryads peeked out from behind a tree, straightening her round glasses and giving a small wave before returning.

The fourth floor overlooked Lunavare through two bay windows accompanied by gargoyles on the north and south sides of the room; Flint noted they weren’t visible from the outside of the building. The east and west walls were covered in floor-to-ceiling bookcases showing off more worn spines than any of the three cared to count. Isabella could almost see the reflection from the sea on the horizon past the wall to the north.

The fifth floor was a mess of corridors that Fiona explained was supposed to be a maze with the street layout of Lunavare itself. After finally reaching the staircase in the middle of the maze, the group made their way to the sixth floor.

The sixth floor looked like some form of storage space; rows and rows of shelves full of all manner of junk; a paperback novel missing its cover, several boxes of what looked like missing person files, a rolled up antique rug, among others. A suit of plate armour was stood on the far side of the room, rapier in hand. Flint moved to walk into the room but Isabella kept him back with a hand on his shoulder before indicating the line painted around the stairwell’s exit. Fiona cleared her throat and began to explain.

“As I’m sure you’re aware, the sixth floor is known for its frequent transformations. Numerous mages have languished years over why, but none of them have been able to reach any form of consensus. But just between us,” Fiona leaned in, “There were rumours a few years back that one of the biology professors lost track of a mimic and I’d bet my first editions on it being up here somewhere. So…don’t touch anything?” She requested. Arturio and the others nodded solemnly in understanding.

The next day they stopped by the botanical gardens along with the rest of their before heading back to the inn for the night. By the fire, Isabella turned the silvery wolfbane leaves over in her hand, contemplating the structure of them before crushing them and tossing them into the pot. She removed the crucible from its burner and poured the molten silver into the mixture, and stirred it over the heat until the liquid took on a uniform silvery colour. Extinguishing the fire, she took one of the potion bottles from her pack and emptied the wolfbane potion into it. She corked the bottle and sealed it with wax, waiting a minute before turning it upside down. Satisfied it wouldn’t leak into her bag, she smiled, wrapped the bottle in paper, and placed it into a side-pocket.

The day before the mission passed without much event. They entered the tower at sunset and tried to rest before whatever happened next decided to happen. When the sun finally sank below the horizon, there was an electric stillness like the moment before lightning strikes. Isabella’s stomach dropped as the tower turned upside down, the gravity somehow keeping them rooted to the floor. There was a painful groan that echoed through the building as it settled into its new home, and the stillness returned. Arturio opened the door a crack to ascertain that it wouldn’t kill them all, before fully opening the door to reveal a deep purple sky swirling over the obsidian lake the tower seemed to be floating on.

“Welcome to the belly of the beast,” they said, a manic grin barely hiding in their voice. Isabella flicked through a compact volume from her bag before speaking.

“It’s the Abyss. They spent years trying to figure out which plane they were sending their most valuable repository of artefacts and knowledge into, and all this time…” she paused, unable to complete her thought. “We need to move; I’m a little rusty on my planar time zones, but I’m pretty sure we’re running faster here than the material plane is.”

The group ascended the staircase, passing Dee and the Dryads without disturbing either, before reaching the fourth floor. They looked out of the bay windows and Flint spoke up.

“The gargoyles are missing,” he said, pointing to the empty perch on the north side. As he mentioned it, there was a loud banging noise on the south window. Arturio turned around and gulped.

“Found them.”

The two gargoyles were putting all their effort into smashing the south window. “Isabella, please reassure me they can’t break through? That’s magical glass, right?” they asked. Isabella shrugged as she drew her staff.

“I mean, the glass is magic, sure; but so are they.” As if to illustrate her point, one of them smashed its beak into the glass and a spider-web crack appeared. “I’d get back if I were you. It’s only a matter of time before they break through, and it’ll be easier to fight ‘em here than up in the maze.” Flint and Arturio made their way behind her and drew their weapons. The gargoyles finally crashed through, and all hell broke loose. One made a beeline for Flint, who swung at its head with his hammer, smashing half of its face off. The other tried to fly at Isabella, but Arturio saw it coming and hit it with the pommel of their short-sword, keeping it at a comfortable distance for Isabella to aim her staff at both gargoyles. “Hey, ugly!” She yelled. Both gargoyles turned to her. “Open wide.” Three glowing blue darts sprung from the tip of her staff and shot towards the stone beasts. Both gargoyles lay in pieces, and the trio took a moment to catch their breath. After a few minutes of brushing gargoyle dust from their clothes, they continued their ascent.

They made their way through the maze without too much difficulty, and they arrived at the sixth floor. Unsurprisingly, the room had changed; gone were the rows of shelving, and instead a grand piano lay in the middle of the room. Underneath it was an antique rug, and on the far side of the room was a large vault door guarded by the suit of armour. Arturio cautiously moved forward, drew his sword, and poked the piano with the tip. Satisfied that it wasn’t going to kill them, they attempted to withdraw their blade only to find that it was stuck to the surface. Arturio cursed as they realised what was about to happen and the piano tackled them to the ground.

Isabella grabbed her staff and got halfway through casting something before the rug leapt up and wrapped itself around her throat. Flint started jumping to try and tear it off her as the suit of armour walked around the chaos and raised its sword to strike him, but he noticed at the last second and parried with his hammer. Arturio struggled against the mimic grappling them and got a grasp on them. They muttered a cantrip and their hand burned hot, making the mimic recoil in pain. They pressed the attack, burning it repeatedly until it lay dead on the floor. They turned to where Isabella was still struggling against the rug and pulled on it, casting their cantrip again. The rug smoked and leapt away, shuffling across the room towards where Flint was fighting the armour. He sidestepped a blow from its sword which hit the rug instead, pinning it to the ground. Flint retaliated by throwing his hammer at its helmet, knocking it clean off and the armour crumbled to the floor. Isabella retrieved a tinderbox from her pack and used it to set the rug alight.

“Well, that’s one mystery solved,” Arturio said. Isabella chuckled.

“You got that right.” She indicated to the vault door. “Think you can crack this, Artie?”

They looked it up and down before replying. “Absolutely.”

Thirty seconds later, the door swung open out, revealing a ladder upwards.

“Boo-yah,” Isabella said, “ _seventh_ floor.” The trio made their way up and found a small room containing a single ragged bed, a desk covered in several volumes that Arturio recognised as the missing books, and an elf covered head to toe in hair who looked about an hour away from death by old age. Isabella approached them carefully, retrieving the wolfbane potion from her pack.

“I’m sorry, but you can’t be here,” the elf said calmly. “There are only a few minutes before midnight; I can’t promise your safety when that happens.” Isabella continued forward.

“You’re what causes the tower’s disappearance, aren’t you?” She asked. The elf turned and smiled softly.

“Well, aren’t you a clever one. What tipped you off?”

“The full moon thing. It seemed like a stupid condition for a library security mechanism. Less so for a werewolf prison. Every full moon, you go to a plane where you can’t hurt anyone, because the only other sentient beings in the tower are inedible. The only thing it doesn’t explain is why the books only started disappearing recently,” She answered. The elf sighed.

“I’m…an old man, even by elvish standards. I fear I may die cooped up in this tower for crimes I couldn’t have controlled, and I desperately want to see just one more sunrise. I thought…if I could stop the transformation, maybe…” he trailed off. Isabella offered him the bottle.

“Here. Wolfbane potion. Hurts like hell, but it’ll do the trick.” The man hesitated, but took the bottle anyway. He removed the seal, and chugged the silver liquid. There was a pause, and he gasped sharply before the shaggy hair that covered him began to recede back to standard length. He smiled.

“Thank you.”

They retrieved the books, and returned to the fourth floor. At dawn, the light from the rising sun spilled into the room, dying everything a bright gold. The man smiled and leaned against the west bookcase before falling into his last sleep. Arturio looked to the others.

“We should take his body for a proper burial. I don’t know if he-" They were cut off by Isabella.

“Don’t sweat it Artie. I know a guy,” she said.

They handed in the books for their payment, dealt with the elf’s body, and went home to find their next adventure before it found them.

 

_ La Fin _


End file.
